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Abraham Lincoln 


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Speech 

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of 

CONGRESSMAN MORRIS SHEPPARD 

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of Texas 


Republican Club Banquet 
New York 

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February 12, 1908 



“ For the first time in the Club’s history they called 
on a Democrat—and a Southern Democrat at that—to 
respond to the toast, ‘Abraham Lincoln.’ Congress¬ 
man Sheppard was roundly applauded when he got 
up. He was still more enthusiastically cheered during 
the course of his speech. "—Ne'iv Tori Sun, February 









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ABRAHAM LINCOLN 


Speech of Congressman Morris Sheppard, Repub¬ 
lican. Club Banquet, New York City, 
February 12, 1908 


“In introducing Congressman Sheppard, President Young said the com¬ 
mittee in charge of the dinner, although representing a Republican organ¬ 
ization, took the position that the fame of Lincoln had passed beyond sec¬ 
tional lines. Therefore it had invited from that section of the country 
where Lincoln’s acts were first the cause of violent controversy a represen¬ 
tative differing in political faith, but not in loyalty to the government. 
At these words, as the Congressman arose to speak, there was a hearty 
demonstration from the diners, who joined with a will in the singing of 
the old rallying song of “Dixie .”—New York Tribune, Feb. 13, 1908. 

On the wall of a Southern home there is today a letter in 
a frame, a letter which reads: “Executive Mansion, 
Washington, Feb. 10, 1S65. Hon. A. H. Stephens: Ac¬ 
cording to our agreement, your nephew, Lieutenant 
Stephens, goes to you bearing this note. Please in return 
to select and send me that officer of the same rank, impris¬ 
oned at Richmond, whose physical condition most urgently 
requires his release. Respectfully, A. Lincoln.” In a cor¬ 
ner of the frame is a photograph of Lincoln on which ap¬ 
pears his signature in his own handwriting. At the close 
of the Hampton Roads conference early in 1865 Lincoln 





2 


had asked Alexander Stephens, the Vice-President of the 
Confederacy, and one of the Southern Commissioners, if 
he could do anything for him personally. “Nothing,” said 
Stephens, “unless you can send me my nephew, who has 
been a prisoner on Johnson’s Island for twenty months.” 
“I shall be glad to do it; let me have his name,” was the 
prompt reply. A few days later Lieutenant Stephens left 
for Richmond, where the exchange was effected, carrying 
the letter and the picture before described, both the gifts 
of Lincoln and for more than forty years they have re¬ 
mained the chief treasures of a Dixie fireside. This inci¬ 
dent was but one of a host of others showing in Lincoln a 
spirit that poised on wings of light above the wrath and 
gloom of war. 

But for other and wider reasons it is proper that the 
portrait of Lincoln should adorn this Southern home. 
He was born of Southern parentage on Kentucky soil. 
His father was a Virginian; his grandfather was a Vir¬ 
ginian; his mother was a Virginian. His mother! The 
very word hallows the lips that utter it. The world has 
not yet grasped its debt to the mothers of mankind. The 
mother is the luster and the hope of history. From her 
bosom flow the impulses that fashion governments and 
alter civilizations. With whisper and caress she organizes 
parliaments, revolutions, epochs. She is the central figure 


3 


of all human sacrifice. Life is the flower of her agony, the 
fruitage of her pain. Humanity is cradled in her tears. 
That men may be she fronts the grave, yea, at each birth 
endures a living crucifixion. Lincoln’s mother possessed 
in marvelous measure the qualities that make maternity 
sacred. He never forgot her prayers, prayers that made 
the cabin in the wilderness a temple grander than St. 
Peters or Cologne. The privations of the frontier soon 
crushed her tender life and a few days before she died, her 
lovely face already radiant with the ecstacy of heaven, 
she obtained from him a promise that he would never 
touch inebriating drink, a promise that remained as sacred 
as her memory. His father, always in deepest poverty, 
had removed from Kentucky largely because the spread of 
slavery and the aristocracy surrounding it tended to de¬ 
grade the status of the whites who were compelled to labor 
with their hands. Thus in his earliest years were perma¬ 
nently impressed on Lincoln’s soul the ideas of liberty, 
equality and personal rectitude that led him later to ac¬ 
claim that day the happiest of history when there should 
be neither slave nor drunkard in the world. Such was his 
mother’s influence that he afterward ascribed to her all 
that he was or hoped to be. The clumsy, hand-hewn coffin 
in which she was interred, the lack of ceremony due to 
the fact that few ministers visited that remote vicinity, the 


4 


lonely grave in the clearing, deepened the sadness that sol¬ 
itude and hardship had implanted in his nature. He did 
not rest until several months later he knelt in the snow 
while a wandering preacher, summoned at his earnest in¬ 
stance, delivered a funeral sermon over her grave. It 
should be said here that the devoted woman, a native of 
Kentucky, who succeeded Lincoln’s mother in the Lincoln 
home, recognized at once his unusual capacities and em¬ 
ployed every means to encourage and develop them. To 
her he gave a love and reverence that were reflected in his 
spotless conduct. The teachings of these two women gave 
gentleness and grace to all his acts and must have prompt¬ 
ed deed after deed of mercy in the memorable conflict with 
which his name is forever associated. 

When Lincoln in 1832 announced his candidacy for the 
Illinois Legislature he stated that the supreme purpose of 
his life was to win the esteem of his fellowmen by being 
worthy of it. Thus at the age of 23 he proclaimed the 
basic impulse of his career, the ambition to be useful to 
mankind. This impuse was but prophetic of the principle 
of brotherhood that was to mark the consummation of his 
efforts and to signalize his relation to history. Perhaps no 
other man of commanding fame ever struggled so effect¬ 
ively against so unpromising an environment. The family 
had removed from Kentucky to Indiana, from Indiana to 


5 


Illinois, following the frontier’s westward sv/eep, locating 
in secluded forests, felling trees with which to construct 
the crudest shelter and clearing land for cultivation. In 
the labors of the farm and woods young Lincoln shared to 
the fullest degree. The ordinary facilities of the most ru¬ 
dimentary education were beyond his reach. His entire 
schooling did not comprise twelve months. Yet he man¬ 
aged to obtain and study with absorbing eagerness Bun- 
yan, Aesop, Weems’ Washington and the Bible. Perhaps 
Aesop inspired his celebrated habit of reinforcing argu¬ 
ment with parable and anecdote. With what prophetic 
interest must he have followed the trials of Washington 
and the patriot armies in founding the nation he was to 
be summoned to preserve! He seems to have been es¬ 
pecially impressed with Washington’s unvarying trust in 
God, a sentiment he approved and emulated. To show his 
estimate of Washington let me cite an excerpt from his ad¬ 
dress on Washington’s birthday at Springfield in 1842: 
“Washington is the mightiest name of earth—long since 
mightiest in moral reformation. On that name a eulogy 
is expected. It cannot be. To add brightness to the sun 
or glory to the name of Washington is alike impossible. 
Let none attempt it. In solemn awe pronounce the name 
and in its naked, deathless splendor leave it shining on.” 
In the Bible, of which he was a constant student, he found 


6 


the doctrine that supplied the definition of his existence, 
the doctrine embodied in Christ’s reply to the lawyer in 
the temple, the doctrine of the fatherhood of God and the 
brotherhood of man, the doctrine that Lincoln considered 
of itself sufficient to form the basis of a church, the doc¬ 
trine his life proclaimed and his death ennobled, the doc¬ 
trine of which the American Declaration of Independence 
is but another form, the doctrine on which rests all liberty 
and progress. Such were the materials with which this 
youthful Vulcan hammered his being into heroic mould 
and purpose. In that stern pioneer age labor of severest 
form was honor’s essence, equality was the natural state 
and men were loved for what they could contribute to the 
general good. In such a school Lincoln learned to revere 
humanity, truth and God. In such a school he developed 
a gentle soul, a giant stature and an iron will. His was a 
universal sympathy with all human aspiration. Hate found 
no lodgment in his heart; there kindness and mercy like 
twin Portias pleaded always against the pound of flesh. 

These elements were slowly fusing in the fires of ex¬ 
perience and ambition, of conflicts, defeats, successes, for 
almost thirty years from the date of his first announcement 
for office. His initial race resulted in disaster and without 
means, without profession, he wavered between the ca¬ 
reers of lawyer and of blacksmith. In 1834 he was elected 


7 


to the legislature and began preparation for the law, bor¬ 
rowing the necessary books and studying alone. Re¬ 
elected to the Legislature in 1836, in 1838 and 1840, he 
took an important part in framing the legislation of that 
formative period, obtained a splendid training in practical 
statesmanship and parliamentary law and gave such evi¬ 
dence of leadership that he was twice his party nominee 
for Speaker. He continued the practice of law with signal 
industry for more than two decades, maintaining the high¬ 
est standards and applying the doctrine of brotherhood to 
his profession. He believed that the lawyer should discour¬ 
age litigation, that the lawyer’s true mission was the mis¬ 
sion of peacemaker. During the early years at the bar per¬ 
sistent poverty and the death of the woman of his first love 
subjected him to severest melancholy. Chosen an elector 
on the Harrison ticket in 1840, on the Clay ticket in 1844 
and canvassing his own and adjoining States in both cam¬ 
paigns, happily married in 1842 and elected to Congress in 
1846, he rapidly became a factor of more than State import¬ 
ance. His single term in Congress was marked by 
faithful service and several comprehensive speeches. 
He helped to make Taylor the Whig candidate for 
President in 1848, thereby contributing to that shrewd¬ 
est of movements by which his party secured the po¬ 
litical fruitage of the war it had so bitterly opposed. 


8 


Another significant act was his bill to prohibit slavery in 
the District of Columbia, providing cash payments to own¬ 
ers voluntarily manumitting their slaves. Already he was 
considering the idea of compensated emancipation which 
during the war he urged on Congress and the border States 
and which he never entirely surrendered. It was during 
this term in Congress that he wrote a letter to his young 
law partner containing certain rules of conduct which every 
young man ought to engrave upon his heart, a statement 
comprising a sounder and more helpful philosophy than 
any similar number of words in all literature, a statement 
breathing brotherhood in every line: “The way for a young 
man to rise is to improve himself every way he can, never 
suspecting that anybody wishes to hinder him. Allow me to 
assure you that suspicion and jealousy never did help any 
man in any situation. There may sometimes be ungener¬ 
ous attempts to keep a young man down; and they will 
succeed, too, if he allows his mind to be diverted from its 
true channel to brood over the attempted injury.” In a 
speech a few^years before he had expressed another phase 
of his love of humanity in this sentence: “If you would 
win a man to your cause first convince him that you are his 
sincere friend.” There is a verse from Aleyn which elabo¬ 
rates this beautiful idea, an idea so illuminative of Lin¬ 
coln’s soul: 


9 


“The fine and noble way to kill a foe 
Is not to kill him; you with kindness may 
So change him that he shall cease to be so; 

And then he’s slain. Sigismund used to .say 
His pardons put his foes to death; for when 
He mortify’d their hate he killed them then.” 

Retiring from Congress, Lincoln devoted himself to the 
law until the repeal of the Missouri Compromise in 1854 
stirred the land almost to frenzy. Douglass, the brilliant 
Democrat from Illinois, had been chiefly instrumental in 
the repeal of the Compromise which had been acclaimed 
as the solution of the slavery question. Lincoln and Doug¬ 
lass became the champions of conflicting theories, and in 
a series of remarkable debates employed every weapon of 
logic and exhausted every field of illustration. In his 
speech before the Convention which nominated him for 
the United States Senate in opposition to Douglass, in the 
debates with that master of the forum, in inaugural ad¬ 
dresses and Presidential messages, on the field of Gettys¬ 
burg and elsewhere Lincoln gave deliverances that in 
chaste and lofty eloquence, in simplicity and power stand 
unsurpassed. He was an emphatic advocate of prohibition, 
canvassing the State of Illinois in its behalf and declaring 
that the liquor traffic was the tragedy of civilization. On 
the morning of his assassination he said to Major Merwin, 


10 


with whom he had stumped Illinois for prohibition, that 
after reconstruction the next great question would be the 
overthrow of the liquor traffic. The rapid march of prohib¬ 
itory sentiment throughout the United States today shows 
with what prescience he spoke. The ideal of human broth¬ 
erhood was with him ever uppermost. Towards the South 
he exhibited the most tolerant and affectionate spirit. In 
his famous speech at Peoria in 1854 he said: “Before pro¬ 
ceeding let me say I think I have no prejudice against the 
Southern people. They are just what we would be in their 
situation. If slavery did not now exist among them, they 
would not introduce it. If it did now exist among us, we 
should not instantly give it up. * * * When Southern 

people tell us they are no more responsible for the origin 
of slavery than we I acknowledge the fact.” The keynote 
of his position was resistance to the extension of slavery. 
In his speech at Cooper Institute in New York in February, 
i860, he said: “Wrong as we think slavery is we can yet 
afford to let it alone where it is because that much is due 
to the necessity arising from its actual presence in the na¬ 
tion ; but can we while our votes will prevent it allow it to 
spread into the national territory and to overrun us here 
in the free States?” He considered the Emancipation Pro¬ 
clamation necessary to the preservation of the Republic. 
The maintenance of the Union as the chief hope of brother- 


11 


hood and freedom was his predominating purpose. He cher¬ 
ished to the last the idea of compensated emancipation. As 
late as February, 1865, when the South was prostrate, he 
presented to his Cabinet a plan of payment for manumitted 
slaves. His Secretary, Nicolay, who probably understood 
him better than any other biographer, said that he never 
relinquished the idea and intimated a renewal of his efforts 
in this direction in his last public address. 

His election to the Presidency and the opening of the 
American Civil War made him the chief civic figure of the 
most colossal crisis in his country's life. Every element 
of his character was brought into instant and effective play. 
It is difficult to appreciate the magnitude of the task he met 
and mastered. His was the responsible supervision of all 
civil and military administration. The young party he had 
led to victory was naturally filled with numerous and dis¬ 
cordant groups all clamorous for recognition. Every phase 
of feeling as to the policies of the government in its most 
trying emergency poured a stream of argument and protest 
across his audience chamber. To harmonize the conflict¬ 
ing sentiments and interests required superbest skill. Re¬ 
lations with other nations demanded the coolest and most 
thorough judgment. He rewrote Seward's dispatch on 
the subject of England's recognition of Southern belliger¬ 
ency, converting that violent document which most proba- 


12 


bly would have incited foreign war into a model of diplo¬ 
matic propriety. The selection of commanders for the un¬ 
tried millions who assembled at his call involved the rarest 
penetration. Forbearance, sympathy and keenest insight 
marked his treatment of the generals in the field. He 
studied the art of war and demonstrated a military talent 
of the highest type. His orders and inquiries showed a 
technical familiarity with all the problems of the contest. 
He grasped the essential features of the proper handling 
of the Union arms and resource. From the beginning he 
foreshadowed the course of the strife with such accuracy 
that competent authorities have pronounced him one of the 
ablest strategists of that world-astounding war. Through¬ 
out the changing fortunes of the conflict he was the 
same serene, unyielding, all-compelling force that 
welded every controversy and every defeat into final 
triumph. Modest almost to self-effacement he held 
himself the humblest of all the Presidents. Of his 
second election to the Presidency he said there was 
in his gratitude to the people no taint of personal triumph 
and that he felt no pleasure in succeeding over others. He 
exercised the prerogative of pardon with tenderness and 
enthusiasm. Mighty as was his brain, still mightier was 
his heart. He had begun a humane and peaceful recon- 


13 


struction of several States and had he lived the nation’s 
wounds which he felt were also his would have far more 
quickly healed. The knowledge that despite his love for all 
mankind his efforts for human elevation would be distorted 
and assailed, that however glorious the ultimate victory 
thousands of American homes were being desolated, that 
brother was emptying the blood of brother and the pre^ 
monition that he would not outlive the struggle wrapped 
him in isolation and sorrow and gave his features an infinite 
sadness in repose. 

His death was one of the profoundest calamities that ever 
shocked the earth. To his noble wife he remarked as the 
clandestine assassin was about to fire, “There is no city I 
desire so much to see as Jerusalem.” He was not permit¬ 
ted to see the old Jerusalem, but in a few hours he was to 
stand among the glories of the new. Nov/ what is the re¬ 
lation of his life to the Republic he aided so materially to 
preserve? It is the development of the idea of brotherhood 
on which the continued preservation of this Union depends. 
What lesson emanates from his spectral figure as it rises 
from that April night in 1865? It is the love of Abraham 
Lincoln for every man, woman and child beneath the 
American flag. Invoking his memory, I, a Southerner and 
a Democrat, true to every principle that animates my patri- 


14 


otic, valorous and incorruptible people, come among you, 
Northerners and Republicans, equally loyal to your convic¬ 
tions, as fellow-countryman, friend and brother. New 
York is my country as well as Texas. Massachusetts, Cal¬ 
ifornia, Illinois are as dear to me as Louisiana, Georgia 
or Tennessee. The memory of Lincoln is one of the fun¬ 
damental buttresses of the reunited America of the twen¬ 
tieth century. In fulfillment of his desires and dreams the 
American people are today a mighty and a deathless broth¬ 
erhood. Forgotten are the discords of the past; departed 
are the specters of civil strife. Near Columbus, Ohio, was 
situated Camp Chase, one of the military prisons of the 
North during the Civil War. There thousands of Southern 
soldiers died, far from the land of their birth and love. 
But their graves have received the tenderest care from 
Northern hearts and hands and an arch has been erected 
on that solemn spot bearing the word “Americans.” This 
word expresses the spirit of patriotism that today uplifts 
and thrills the nation, the spirit in which Lincoln moved 
and spoke and prayed. It hallows the past, it inspires the 
present and oh, may it animate the endless reaches of the 
future. It arouses love for every part of our common coun¬ 
try, for every city and every State, every mountain and 
every shore, every forest and every plain—love for our 
traditions and our history—love for the home of freedom, 


15 


the hope of liberty, the light of time, the radiance of the 

ages—our own United States. 

“The poet sings of sunny France, 

Fair olive laden Spain, 

The Grecian Isles, Italia’s smiles, 

And India’s torrid plain, 

Of Egypt, countless ages old, 

Dark Afric’s palms and dates; 

Let me acclaim the land I name 
My own United States. 

The poet sings of Switzerland, 

Braw Scotland’s heathered moor, 

The shimm’ring sheen of Ireland’s green, 

Old England’s rockbound shore, 

Quaint Holland and the fatherland 
Their charms in verse relates, 

Let me acclaim the land I name 
My own United States. 

I love every inch of her prairie land, 

Each stone on her mountains’ side, 

I love every drop of the water clear 
That flows in her rivers wide; 

I love every tree, every blade of grass, 

Within Columbia’s gates, 

The Queen of the earth is the land of my birth, 

My own United States.” 






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